Morning Take-Out

Nestle to Buy Pfizer’s Infant Nutrition Unit for $11.9 Billion | The Swiss food giant Nestlé agreed on Monday to buy Pfizer’s infant nutrition business for $11.9 billion in a move to expand the company’s presence in the global baby food market.

The deal will help Nestlé tap into the growth of the emerging markets. Nestlé, which already has a large infant nutrition business in Latin America, will add operations in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Pfizer’s nutrition business currently generates 85 percent of its revenue from emerging markets.

“Pfizer Nutrition is an excellent strategic fit, and this acquisition underlines our commitment to be the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company,” Nestlé’s chief executive, Paul Bulcke, said in a statement. DealBook »

Vodafone to Acquire Cable and Wireless Worldwide for $1.7 Billion | The British phone company Vodafone agreed to buy Cable and Wireless Worldwide, adding a fixed telephone line network and services for businesses to its wireless operations. DealBook »

DEAL NOTES

‘Sugar Daddies’ of the Presidential Election | “If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead,” Frank Rich writes in New York magazine. Among the lesser-known money men is Robert Mercer, “the hedge fund master of ‘flash trading’ who poured a clandestine $1 million into ads attacking the ‘ground-zero mosque’ and nearly another $3 million into a scale-model railroad in his Long Island mansion.” NEW YORK

Meetings of Finance Ministers End With Little Consensus | Although wealthy nations pledged over the weekend to increase the lending capacity of the International Monetary Fund to protect Europe from a worsening crisis, world leaders agreed to little beyond that, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

China Looks to Germany as a Haven | Rather than invest in the countries hit hardest by Europe’s debt crisis, China has been buying German bonds, helping to push Berlin’s borrowing costs to record lows, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Why Kellogg Is Swallowing Pringles | “What the company is buying with Pringles is not just a line of products that is already huge internationally, but a group of Procter & Gamble merchandisers,” The New York Times reports. “Their job will be to bolster the company’s foreign snack divisions, and to step on it. Yes, Kellogg is trying something improbable — devouring Pringles to improve its health. Will it work?” NEW YORK TIMES

Executives Remain Skittish About Deals | Of more than 1,500 executives polled by Ernst & Young, only 31 percent said they expected to pursue an acquisition over the next 12 months, compared with 41 percent in the survey released in October, Reuters reports. REUTERS

Amylin Is Said to Pursue a Sale | Amylin is working with Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, according to a person briefed on the matter, who added that no sale is imminent. DealBook »

US Airways Strikes Deal With AMR’s Unions | In an unusual move that could prefigure a serious bid for its bankrupt rival, US Airways said that it had reached an agreement with the three main labor unions at American Airlines to support a merger, Jad Mouawad of The New York Times reports. DEALBOOK

Avon Faces a Challenge at Home | As it resists an unsolicited offer from Coty, Avon Products, which built a reputation for door-to-door sales, contends with a market for cosmetics that is increasingly moving online, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Beam Said to Be in Deal for Pinnacle Vodka | Beam, which makes Jim Beam bourbon and Sauza tequila, is paying about $600 million in cash for Pinnacle vodka and Calico Jack rum, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. WALL STREET JOURNAL

L’Occitane as Takeover Target? | Analysts at Macquarie said the French cosmetics company L’Occitane is undervalued and has strong brand recognition, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

A Case for Legal Liability at Lehman | Sunday evening’s installment of “60 Minutes” takes another look at the fall of Lehman Brothers, asking “why no one at Lehman has been called to account.” CBS NEWS

Barclays Shareholders Are Encouraged to Vote Against Pay Plan | The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, a group representing public sector pensions in Britain, called the compensation for Barclays’s chief executive “hard to justify,” Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Deutsche Bank May Book a Charge From Sale of Actavis | Deutsche Bank may take a charge of as much as $528 million related to a sale of the Swiss drug maker Actavis Group to Watson Pharmaceuticals, Bloomberg News reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the process. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Caixabank Increases Stake in Portuguese Lender | Caixabank of Spain said it had agreed to buy 18.87 percent of Banco BPI for about $123.5 million, increasing its stake in the Portuguese bank to nearly 49 percent, The Financial Times reports. FINANCIAL TIMES

Spain May Let Banks Take Assets Off Their Books | The Spanish government is considering plans to allow banks to set aside the real estate assets for which they have already provisioned, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

A Revival for E.F. Hutton | It was the 1980s when the brokerage firm E.F. Hutton was last a prominent actor on the Wall Street stage. But a group of former officials plans to start a new advisory firm under the same name, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

New Investment Strategist at BMO | Brian Belski, formerly of Oppenheimer & Company and Merrill Lynch, will split his time between New York and Toronto as the chief investment strategist for the Canadian firm BMO Capital Markets, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Small Banks Get Shareholder Leeway | Small banks once had to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission if they had more than 500 shareholders, but the JOBS Act has raised that threshold to 2,000, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

KSL Walks Away From Great Wolf | The water park operator Great Wolf Resorts said late on Friday that one of its bidders, KSL Capital Partners, has walked away after another, Apollo Global Management, raised its bid to $7.85 a share. DealBook »

Providence Equity to Invest in Film Company | Providence Equity Partners has agreed to buy a large minority stake in the Chernin Group, a movie and television production company, with unidentified people familiar with the terms saying the deal was valued at about $200 million, The Los Angeles Times reports. LOS ANGELES TIMES

Weetabix May Be Sold | The private equity firm Lion Capital is considering selling Weetabix to Bright Food of China in a deal that could value the cereal company at about $1.6 billion, The Financial Times reports, citing unidentified people close to the situation. FINANCIAL TIMES

Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund Has a $30 Billion War Chest | The Qatar Investment Authority plans to make investments this year on an “opportunistic” basis, said a board member, Hussain Al Abdulla, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

3i Group on Private Equity in India | “We don’t want to be too early in certain markets in terms of evolution of the private equity industry or the size of the opportunity,” Anil Ahuja, head of the Asian operations of the 3i Group, told The Wall Street Journal. “If you have the right team on the ground, you can make private equity work in just about any market.” WALL STREET JOURNAL

Japanese Pensions to Increase Alternative Investments | A survey by JPMorgan Chase showed that Japanese pensions we0re planning to increase their allocations to hedge funds and private equity, even after AIJ Investment Advisors was accused of losing clients’ money, Bloomberg News reports. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Amid Proxy Fight, Canadian Pacific Reports Jump in Profit | The Canadian Pacific Railway reported on Friday that it had a first-quarter profit of 142 million Canadian dollars, a 318 percent increase from the period a year earlier, Ian Austen writes in The New York Times. DealBook »

How Tech Companies Can Get Left Behind | Nick Bilton writes on the Bits blog that the culture of Google and Facebook — “like going to work on an all-inclusive cruise ship” — may have something to do with why these companies have been slow to take advantage of the shift to mobile. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

BTG Said to Receive Strong Demand for I.P.O. | BTG Pactual, the Brazilian bank whose chief executive was recently fined for insider trading, has attracted orders worth $6.6 billion for its I.P.O., three times its target, Bloomberg News reports, citing an unidentified person familiar with the deal. BLOOMBERG NEWS

Hong Kong Regulator Penalizes an Underwriter | Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission fined and revoked the license of a division of the Mega Financial Holding Company, accusing it of inadequate due diligence for a 2009 offering, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Challenge of Regulating Silicon Valley | “You want a company culture that says, ‘We are on a mission to change the world; the world is a better place because of us,’” Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a venture capitalist with Greylock Partners, told The New York Times.

“The easy thing to say is, ‘If you try to regulate us, you’ll do more harm than good, you’re not good social architects.’ I’m not endorsing that, but I understand it,” Mr. Hoffman continued. NEW YORK TIMES

Stanford’s Close Ties to the Tech Industry | “If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for the elites of the American Century, Stanford is the farm system for Silicon Valley,” writes Ken Auletta in The New Yorker. NEW YORKER

Andreessen Horowitz’s Bet Against Instagram | Although the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz stands to make money on the sale of Instagram to Facebook, the rewards would have been higher if it had not chosen to back one of Instagram’s competitors in 2010, the Bits blog reports. NEW YORK TIMES BITS

Start-Up Aims to Achieve ‘TV Everywhere’ | NimbleTV, which is backed by Greycroft Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners and the Tribune Company, is starting to test a service that lets users play a package of television channels on Web devices, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

A Prominent Bankruptcy Lawyer Now Ministers to His Firm | Martin Bienenstock, who worked his skills in the General Motors bankruptcy, now has to do the same for Dewey & LeBoeuf, where he is one of the five people who lead the firm. DealBook »

A Vast Cover-Up at Wal-Mart | An examination by The New York Times found that top Wal-Mart executives, faced with evidence of pervasive corruption Mexico, focused on hushing up the matter rather than rooting out wrongdoing. NEW YORK TIMES

Bank of America Accord in Lawsuit Is Challenged | Lawyers leading a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the directors of Bank of America over its purchase of Merrill Lynch have agreed to settle the matter for $20 million even though damages in the case could reach $5 billion, according to plaintiffs in a parallel suit against the bank’s board in Delaware, Gretchen Morgenson writes in The New York Times. DealBook »

Employees Find a Voice on Executive Pay | “Traditionally, employee-shareholders have rarely exercised their voting power. But, as the vote at Citigroup suggests, stockholders of all stripes may be starting to assert themselves more,” Gretchen Morgenson writes in The New York Times. NEW YORK TIMES

Regulators Said to Pursue Exemptions From Derivatives Rules | United States regulators are considering ways to give foreign banks and overseas units of American banks an exemption from new rules governing derivatives transactions, The Financial Times reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. FINANCIAL TIMES

Fed Continues to Baffle Some Observers | Ben S. Bernanke has tried to be more transparent, but “there are reasons to doubt that the efforts are increasing public understanding of monetary policy,” The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

MF Global Customers Put Pressure on JPMorgan | A group of MF Global customers is urging JPMorgan Chase to “return hundreds of millions of dollars in MF Global customer funds transferred,” in letter to be sent to lawmakers and regulators on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reports. WALL STREET JOURNAL

Spain Moves to Retaliate Over YPF Nationalization | Spain said it would aim to restrict imports of biodiesel fuel from Argentina, after the government in Buenos Aires decided to take control of a division of the Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, but the move was not as hard-hitting as Spain had threatened, The New York Times reports. NEW YORK TIMES

Search for Next Bank of England Chief to Begin in Autumn | The five-year term of Mervyn A. King, the governor of the Bank of England, concludes at the end of June next year, Reuters reports. REUTERS